INSIDE A CAMPUS TREASURE: Chancellor Green, one of Princeton Universitys architectural landmarks, provided a special backdrop for the treasures on display at Sundays International Development Fair and Artisan Craft celebration. It was the craft shows third year, according to Paula K. Chow, co-founder and director of Princetons International Center, which has initiated numerous intercultural programs on and off the campus.

Ellen Gilbert

Borough residents can expect a letter during the coming week telling them the assessed value of their homes, as of October 1, 2009. Township residents will receive similar notices in about two weeks time.

Dilshanie Perera

New designs for the future of the current 5-acre Westerly Road Church site were shared with the Planning Board last Thursday. Neighborhood residents expressed concern that the development has the potential to increase flooding in the area, while board members generally agreed that they liked the new concept plan, but would have preferred that more affordable housing be incorporated at the site.

Bill Alden

As the Princeton High boys swimming team produced a stirring state tournament run last winter that culminated in a trip to the state Public B semifinals, PHS head coach Greg Hand saw his corps of freshman swimmers come of age.

Book Review

Stuart Mitchner

“In the morning [he] could direct the action of two thousand extras, and in the afternoon decide on the colors of Clark Gable’s coat and the shadows on Vivien Leigh’s neck.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald on Victor Fleming

The quote comes by way of Sheilah Graham in Michael Sragow’s lively and illuminating biography Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Pantheon $40), which has overturned some long-held misconceptions of mine about this underrated and misunderstood filmmaker, who died suddenly in 1949. Born in 1889, he made his first picture in 1919, his first talkie in 1929, and in 1939 he spearheaded the filming of two movie legends, The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind.

Music/Theater

Donald Gilpin

“Good god! Can it be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open that I shall tread in the sticky warm blood with the axe Good god, can it be?”

Neither Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1866 classic novel Crime and Punishment nor the scaled down, 90-minute dramatic adaptation by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus currently playing at Princeton University’s Theatre Intime is for the faint of heart. The story of the destitute student Raskolnikov, who—considering himself one of the “extraordinary” people who can ignore everyday laws in pursuit of what he considers a higher good, murders two women with an axe then suffers the psychological consequences, is dark and troubling. Both novel and play challenge the intellect, the emotions, and the ethics of their readers and audience.